While youth of all backgrounds are victims of violence, black youth seem to be at the epicenter of Indianapolis's rising crime rate. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention list homicide as the leading cause of death for blacks nationwide from ages 10 to 24. Indiana had the third-highest rate of black homicides among all states in 2006, according to a study by the Violence Policy Center, a

When asked what color he would use to describe his life, Ricardo Mendes, 17, of Salvador, Brazil, said he would choose black. "I think black means history, and my color is history," he said. Jefferson Sosazo, 18, also would choose black "because the black color says it all. It means suffering. It means that we want a better life." Centuries of slavery have left their legacy in Brazil. Although the

To many students, activities such as choir, band, color guard or athletics are an important part of their school experience. They drill and practice for hours to compete against other teams, and many say later that the experience made an impression on them. For more and more students, stepping, an African-American art form with roots in African history, has had a similar impact. Stepping groups ca

I n June 1964, three civil-rights volunteers disappeared in Philadelphia, Miss. In early August, 44 days later, police found their bodies buried in an earthen dam. The activists -- Michael Schwerner, 24, James Chaney, 21, and Andrew Goodman, 20 -- did not share a final resting place. In the '60s, no cemetery would take both blacks and whites. The three were part of the 1964 Freedom Summer, an effo

Earlier this month, an estimated 300,000 people from around the country met at Indiana Black Expo to celebrate the accomplishments of African-Americans. During the event, Expo released a report produced by the Indiana Youth Institute that showed Indiana's black youth continue to be more at risk of failure than white youth. The study, based on data from federal, state and local sources, found low b

Most people would agree that history is an important subject to study. Not everyone, however, enjoys learning about it. There are several common ways to learn about the past -- reading about it in books or listening to an older, wiser person. These methods of instruction are fine, but sometimes reading about a historical event, or even hearing someone speak on the subject, doesn't interest childre

B irmingham, Alabama, 1963: A city so consumed by racial injustice that black and white people cannot legally play checkers together. It is hard to imagine such a world, but for writer Diane McWhorter, then a sixth-grader growing up in Birmingham, laws like this were routine and accepted. "I wish I could tell you that all this was shocking and exceptional. But my attitudes were wholly average for